


Babyproofing

by zorilleerrant



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 10:11:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6324961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zorilleerrant/pseuds/zorilleerrant





	Babyproofing

When Petunia found a baby on her doorstep, she shrieked. Her very first impulse had been to assume it was a rodent of some sort, because who would leave a baby on a doorstep? But, no, it was a baby, wrapped in nothing but a single blanket, and there on the hard brick of her front step for who knew how long. The baby shivered when she picked up the small bundle, and a letter fell out. She picked it up, but it was long moments before she read it.

She changed the baby (he hadn’t been crying, even though he was wet), and she fed the baby, and she dressed the baby in some of the clothes Dudley had outgrown, and she wondered about whether or not to call the police. Surely there was some better person to contact about an abandoned child, but wasn’t it a crime to leave the poor boy? And then she remembered the note.

It said things she’d half expected, all her life, to read. It said that exactly what she’d warned her sister about, if she insisted on being mixed up with people like that, had come to pass. And, even though she’d always expected she would, she never felt an urge to shout to the heavens, to tell Lily’s ghost I Told You So. Instead, she whispered to baby Harry that she’d never let him fall into the kind of trouble Lily did; she would protect him from himself.

Maybe, she thought, Harry would be like her and she wouldn’t have to worry.

Two children was more work than one. Oh, she had known it would be, that was why she had set her schedule to have her second child years from now when Dudley was already in school and could occupy himself most of the time. But it had never struck her that it would be this dramatic. Holding Dudley and feeding him had left her no free hand to answer the phone, or move the wash when the timer rang, or put the dishes away. Now, holding Dudley and feeding him left her no free hand to answer the phone, or comfort Harry when he cried, or move the wash when the timer rang, or heat up the second bottle, or put the dishes away, or feed Harry now that he was hungry too and distressed.

Some nights she had just had too much, and she asked Vernon for help, but he gave her a look like he couldn’t fathom what she was thinking, and anyway, if she wanted help for the no good son of her no good sister, it wasn’t any of his business. She’d chosen to take him in. She’d chosen to spend his hard earned money on that waste of space. These were the first times Petunia heard him use ‘boy’ or ‘it’ or ‘freak’ or ‘that thing’. She took care of Harry by herself.

When she asked for help with Dudley, Vernon chucked his son under the chin and said he was a self-reliant little man, and anyway, he wanted his dear old mum.

Petunia came to find that she didn’t have just twice as many tasks to do the way she thought she would, but seemingly many more than that. She didn’t understand. Surely twice as many boys could only eat twice as much, could only make twice as much of a mess, could only wear twice as many clothes, only needed twice as many kisses and cuddles. There couldn’t be more things to do. The cooking and sweeping and laundry and dishes and doctor’s appointments and plans for dinner parties still happened. They were just a bit slower. Just a bit later.

Vernon didn’t like that. He’d never shouted at her since the day she got pregnant, but he shouted now, and he told her to hurry up and take care of it. Now that she insisted on two boys instead of one, they needed the money from his raise more than ever, and anyway, wasn’t it her job to make a nice party for his nice boss, wasn’t that what she wanted as a housewife?

And Petunia couldn’t really explain to him about how objects seemed to go missing and reappear later, or rearrange themselves when she turned around. When she found them floating towards Harry, she thought, perhaps, he would outgrow this strangeness, that it was just a passing childhood affliction, like the chicken pox she was expecting both boys to catch sooner rather than later, although she hoped not for some time.

And then one day Dudley ended up on the roof, and Petunia had to explain.

Explain what, Vernon had demanded, since Dudley was barely walking and couldn’t have gotten up there himself, and anyway, he didn’t want to hear her excuses, woman, he just wanted her to get his son of the damn roof before she got him killed. Honestly. What was he to do with her.

Petunia had gotten Dudley down, by means of carefully balancing on a rickety ladder they hadn’t yet returned to their neighbor, but she couldn’t get the image out of her head; her poor baby sat, precariously close to the edge, his face ashen as birch bark and beginning to cry, looking at Petunia like she was the only hope in the world.

Harry looked delighted, giggling and clapping his hands, green eyes glowing just like Lily’s had the day she abandoned her family forever.

Petunia put him in the cupboard under the stairs. Not to punish him of course (even though her heart of hearts was consumed with rage for what he’d done to his poor cousin who had just barely escaped falling to his death), but because she could remember, from those few, distant words during the summertime, that sometimes magic needed eye contact to work, and she thought the cupboard was the only dark place in the house. She tried never to let the boys in the same room again, and she would try, she told herself, but only a truly dark place would prevent the boy from making eye contact with anything, and she couldn’t live with herself if Harry hurt himself just by looking at some thing when she could have prevented it all along. What kind of mother would she be?

Vernon wanted to know that, too, of course, and why would she let the freak do such a thing, and what if Dudley had fallen, and what would the neighbors have said, and anyway where was his supper because he didn’t pay her to stand around staring wide-eyed at the roof.

And nothing else happened for the rest of the evening, even as Petunia took Harry out of the cupboard to feed him, even when she had to look away for the long moments it would take to move his bed from one room to another.

But then he started having accidents more and more often, and she could only put him in the cupboard so many times. She wondered if he had nightmares (she heard him awaken screaming in the middle of the night too many times more than Dudley) and she thought about the nice dark safe space she’d made in the cupboard for him, where his own strange curse would stay away from him, where he could be safe and hidden from the malevolent forces of the world that wanted to drag him back.

She worried, but he giggled and clapped his hands, and his eyes shone like Lily’s when she showed off one of her tricks to her sister, and she thought maybe he was really happier in there. He couldn’t share a bedroom with Dudley anymore, after all. He might as well have a small, safe place no one would ever think to look into. Maybe the magic wouldn’t find him here.

Maybe, Petunia thought, if she could show him how to do enough things the normal way, They wouldn’t have the hold on Harry they thought they should.


End file.
